Why I Didn’t Do Irene Lyon’s SBSM Programme

This blog post is a bit of a departure from my usual content. If you're not into Somatic Experiencing, Polyvagal Theory, body work, bottom-up healing, or nervous system regulation, you might want to skip this one. I won’t have space to explain the full backstory without writing a book, I’m afraid. So let’s dive right in.

Lately, I’ve been really curious about “nervous system regulation” and how it connects to healing chronic health issues and possibly even effects of complex trauma that other treatments don’t seem to touch on. It is said it’s especially true for chronic illnesses like ME, chronic fatigue, MS, and autoimmune problems. Social media is full of influencers saying that nervous system regulation is the key to healing everything from food intolerances to fibromyalgia, but I can’t say if that’s true. I can only speak for my own experience.

What got me interested in this wasn’t chronic illness, but more issues with focus, a sense of lethargy without depression, and my constant weight issues. All the health changes I’ve tried, including restrictive diets, haven’t really worked for me.

I’ve tried a lot of therapy and different healing methods, but I still feel stuck in body reactions like dissociation, disconnection, and trauma responses that just won’t improve. That’s when I found Irene Lyon and her SBSM (Smart Body Smart Mind) programme. I’ve been following her for over a year and thought she might have the answers I was looking for.

But after diving into her free material, especially on YouTube, and doing her first paid course, “21 Day Nervous System Tune-Up”, I was left feeling really disappointed, still searching for answers.

My Initial Curiosity

Irene has a big following online, especially on social media, because she promotes this idea of “next-level” healing. She promises you can resolve long-standing issues through nervous system work, and honestly, it sounded too good to ignore. Plus, the theories behind it are solid. I first came across Polyvagal Theory by Stephen Porges and Somatic Experiencing (SE) by Peter Levine years ago. I even worked with an SE practitioner, so I’m somewhat familiar with the theory. But what I was missing was the practical side of it—how to go from feeling disconnected and frozen to integrating and healing.

I wanted to learn how to teach my body to feel safe and regulated. Safety and regulation are at the core of nervous system healing because they create the foundational environment necessary for any kind of healing to occur. The body has an inherent ability to heal, but for this process to happen, it needs to feel safe. This is an important detail that many people are promoting, too (e.g. see interview with Dr. K in reference list below). When we’re stuck in survival modes—whether that’s freeze, fight, or flight—our physiology is constantly on high alert. In these states, the body’s resources are diverted to survival functions, meaning it’s not able to engage in restorative processes like digestion, immune support, or emotional healing.

I spent a while researching different programmes before settling on Irene Lyon’s 21-day Tune-Up. There are other alternatives like DNRS, Primal Trust, and the Gupta Program but I was really curious about Irene Lyon’s approach, given my experience with SE and Polyvagal. She also shares my views that healing should be more holistic and that the quick fix methods promoted by many in the online space are doing more damage than good. She also confirmed that her programme could help even those that are currently going through difficult times but still want the body to come out of freeze. Which was my main intention.

So I signed up. And that although at the time my intuition already screamed NO. After completing the course, I realised that even though she’s credible and has a lot of knowledge (including training with Peter Levine), I felt cheated by this course, like she was leaving out important information needed for real healing.

The Course Experience

I’ve got to say, the course is packed with content. Irene covers the nervous system in a lot of detail, and there are plenty of exercises (neurosensory exercises), with Orienting being the most important. This could basically be described as grounding with an awareness of your surroundings, i.e. being completely mindful. She also introduces Feldenkrais as a healing method that she studied and talks about other ideas like following your intuition. It’s good, so far, so good.

But for someone like me who’s solution-focused, I struggled to see why she included so much detail. Why is Feldenkrais relevant to this approach? How important is it, really? I didn’t need entertainment—I wanted to understand why and how to do the exercises in a holistic way that would actually lead to better connection and regulation. But even if this message was there, it clearly got lost in a lot of words.

I also asked a few questions in the course. There’s a support team, and they’re happy to answer. But, to be honest, most of the responses tend to direct people to one of Irene’s YouTube videos for the answers. That doesn’t help much. When I asked how to tell which exercises from the programme were meant for what, the reply was basically “just keep orienting.” So the main takeaway from the 21-Day Nervous System Tune-Up, according to her team, is: “Stay grounded and mindful, and you’ll heal.” Just to emphasise this: I paid $ 300 dollars to learn that I need to ground more, theory that doesn’t help my body heal and an invitation to learn what I really want to know in the next-level course.

I’m sure some people finish this course and feel like they’ve learned something, but I think most are just overwhelmed and confused by the end of it. The information is very high-level, and Irene has a tendency to explain simple concepts in a lot of words.

Which is true for her free content as well. Her YouTube videos are full of theory, but when it comes to practical advice or examples, they’re really vague. I even analysed some of her most popular videos with ChatGPT, just to see if I was missing something. The verdict was pretty clear—while there’s plenty of theory, there’s a lack of concrete, tangible examples on how to actually do the work to heal. The steps. The repetitions. The visible signs that “capacity” is increasing. The nitty-gritty.

The first-level course clearly lacks practical application. There’s no clear roadmap for applying the teachings in a structured way. The explanations for the exercises and how they relate to trauma healing and what they’re targeted at were just very unclear. Though to be honest, I took away her orienting advice, given that I’ve missed on many other opportunities to include the approach of “grounding” as a central piece that many other trauma experts propose at well.

There’s one video in the course where Irene admits that “coming out of freeze” isn’t the focus of the Tune-Up. This is a huge point, as “freeze” is a major issue for many people taking her course, and I was a bit shocked that the information I was expecting to get from this course wasn’t actually part of this course.

Irene’s free content draws people in with relatable ideas, but once you commit to the paid material, it doesn’t seem to match the depth you’d expect for the price. For $ 300, I’d expect a clear, self-guided starter programme, but instead, it felt like a teaser for the $ 2000 SBSM programme. It’s frustrating because I was hoping for clear, practical steps, but instead, I got a lot of vague ideas. And of course, no refunds. Though Irene is obviously paying employees and needs to make enough to sustain her business, I still think she’s a little out of touch with how much this course is actually worth, given the benefits it offers.

Other Red Flags

So, after ignoring my gut feeling about the course and getting disappointed, I went back to my intuition and started reflecting on why something about Irene Lyon felt off to me in the first place. I revisited her videos and asked others about their first impressions. I came across a comment online where someone said Irene Lyon set off their "BS radar." While I don’t think it’s BS what she says, that pretty much sums up how I felt. Some radar came on. I just don’t know what it was detecting.

Something about Irene’s personality really triggers me. There’s an emotional distance in her videos that I can’t unsee. Her tone is monotonous, her expressions restrained, and there’s rarely an authentic smile. At times, there’s even a hint of something else—discomfort, maybe? Or is it a quiet sense of superiority? Either way, it doesn’t feel warm or engaging. In many videos, I even catch a flicker of what looks like disgust on her face. It all adds up to something that, to me, just doesn’t feel entirely authentic. I feel terrible saying this, but in a world where it sometimes feels like people are just trying to cash in on the sick and sell false hope without any real empathy, it's important to trust our instincts.

Red flags like these can help us distinguish between those who genuinely want to help and those who are just in it for the profit. Irene is definitely an expert, and she definitely cares, or she wouldn’t have continued on the search for answers for her patients, but her delivery often feels patronising. The jargon she uses—terms like “student,” “mentor,” and “alumni”—creates this strange sense of hierarchy that I just don’t get. Who talks like that? Does no one else find her language distant and off-putting? For people like me who have those sensitive traits from our neurodivergence, we need experts who are not just knowledgeable, but also emotionally available and trustworthy. And, in my opinion, Irene doesn’t quite provide that to trust her as an authority.

Before I wrap up this rant about what feels like the worst investment of my life, there are a couple more things about Irene Lyon’s work that I find odd:

First, she doesn’t seem to apply her own principles to her life. In one interview with her husband, she jokingly admits this, too. She often claims that she was once “functionally frozen,” as her “mentor” told her, but never really explains how that affected her life. What does functional freeze look like? How does it show up? She never goes into detail about how it ruled her life, nor does she explain what she did to come out of it. Not the treatments she got, but the things she did in her life to change it. It seems she let other people take care of it. Has she come out of functional freeze? I read in another book on the vagus nerve that someone in ventral vagal regulation is supposed to be open-hearted, kind, smiling, friendly. But, honestly, her face and body language say anything but that. It leaves me wondering how she can claim to be an authority on regulation when she clearly isn’t regulated herself. She’s an amazing speaker though, using her body language well and all. But her face doesn’t speak regulation. My gut feeling is that she has emotional issues. Definitely unprocessed trauma. Or she secretly doesn’t like what she’s doing.

Second, she often says she has no childhood trauma, only “chemical trauma.” I don’t know if this is true, but it’s something I remember hearing from her in one of her videos, and I’ve seen similar comments online. Now, it doesn’t matter if a practitioner has experienced trauma themselves, but it does matter when it feels like the person you’re working with has substantial trauma that they’re in denial about. Nearly everyone from very functional, very high-performance families carries substantial and invisible unprocessed trauma from growing up with very unhealthy mindsets, in my opinion.
The odd thing is that the rare moments Irene shares bits of her own life, it often feels like she leaves out important details that would make her stories more credible. For example, she never explains how she came out of freeze, what that looked like. And there’s this story about her skin erupting, but she never tells us what happened before that moment. What did Peter Levine do on the day her skin flared up that went all wrong? She says a lot without saying a thing. I’ve watched several videos of hers, and she never goes into these details. Not that she needs to. But if her marketing strategy is to be relatable, show vulnerability, then these are the details missing.

My Final Thoughts

I don’t think Irene Lyon is an imposter. Her work is rooted in solid theory. But for someone like me, who already understands a bit about nervous system regulation and trauma in theory, the course just didn’t offer the practical guidance I was hoping for.

I’m not willing to pay $2,000 for her SBSM programme, even if the $300 I already spent is deducted, which is admirable. With the high standards I set for a course this expensive, I’d probably just be setting myself up for even more disappointment. Sure, there are plenty of glowing testimonials, but I just don’t feel the value matches the price. Healing shouldn’t be this expensive—especially when there’s no 1:1 empathetic coaching involved. While I do get the sense that Irene genuinely cares about helping people, I can’t shake the feeling that the status side of things is a bit of a priority for her.

Or, to put it another way: I’m possibly not her ideal audience (apart from the fact that I’m picky, obviously). Maybe her courses are better suited for people who are new to this kind of work. Maybe the ones who benefit most aren’t those struggling with severe disconnection paired with neurodiversity—like me—where other factors, like toxins, might play a role. I suspect her ideal “student,” the one who thrives with her “curriculum,” just hasn’t done any deeper psychological exploration yet. She keeps talking about the “go-go-go, type-A” personality, probably meaning people who have never really stopped to see life—just rushed through it. And for them, her work might be life-changing. Because let’s be honest: mindfulness in disguise does work wonders for people who’ve never actually slowed down and reflected their lives before.

I’m still trying to figure out what I can actually do every day to bring myself back into regulation. I need a routine, a set of exercises that help in specific situations—something that supports my physiology, helps me feel safe in my body, increases natural nervous system regulation, and gradually brings me out of freeze. Alongside that, I’m desperately trying to understand what healing looks like once you're in regulation. No two people are the same, but what kind of physical reactions should I be looking for? How do I recognise what’s happening in my body and know how to respond? The core of this work is that people like me don’t have regulation yet—so someone needs to explain how to actually read my physiology. What does it mean to have more capacity? Not just in theory, but in real-life experiences. I need examples.

I’ve unfollowed her now, but I’m still drawn to the whole area of nervous system regulation. I’ve bought a few books and am exploring other programmes. Will I find the healing I’m looking for in nervous system regulation? I don’t know. Also, at this point, I can’t confidently recommend any other resource. The only thing I’ve found so far is Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve by Stanley Rosenberg, which includes exercises you can also find explained on YouTube. It’s a very technical book, unfortunately, which is why I only recommend it with hesitation, but Rosenberg is closely connected to Stephen Porges and has studied his work for decades. At least this book offers concrete exercises that are supposed to stimulate the vagus nerve, one application at a time. Do they work? I don’t know. Time will tell.

I think I’ve said enough for now, so I’ll wrap this up. Thanks for reading—I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

References:

Rosenberg, S. (2017). Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve: Self-Help Exercises for Anxiety, Depression, Trauma, and Autism. North Atlantic Books.

Dr. Kanojia, A. (Guest) & Barlett, S. (2024). We Are Producing Millions Of Lonely, Addicted, Purposeless Men & Women! [Video]. Link

Smart Body Smart Mind™ (SBSM): Link

Dynamic Neural Retraining System™ (DNRS): Link

Primal Trust™: Link

The Gupta Program™: Link